Spotted Owl Wins Another Round in Court : Environment: Appeals panel says White House cannot have secret communications with Endangered Species Committee. Ruling disallows 13 proposed timber sales in bird’s habitat.

In a decision hailed by environmentalists as a victory for the spotted owl and for open government, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that secret communications between the White House and a special committee that makes decisions on endangered species are illegal.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered a new hearing during which environmental organizations could ask about the nature and impact of secret May, 1992, conversations between Bush Administration officials and members of a special committee known as “the God Squad,” the ultimate arbiter of the fate of an endangered species.

On May 14, 1992, the Endangered Species Committee exempted 13 proposed timber sales from the Endangered Species Act’s protection of the northern spotted owl, amid published reports that Clayton Yeutter, Bush’s environmental policy coordinator, lobbied members of the committee to change their votes.

The sales involved 88 million board-feet of lumber and the Bureau of Land Management would have received $30 million for the timber.

Ten environmental groups, led by the Portland Audubon Society, challenged the decision and the way in which it was made.

The sales have been held up because of the pending appeal in this case and an injunction issued by a Seattle federal judge in another suit involving the spotted owl.

Wednesday’s ruling was hailed as “an important blow for open government” by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Victor Sher of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund.

“To allow the President or his staff to bring pressure to bear on the decision-makers outside the normal process would represent a fundamental perversion of the protections established by the Endangered Species Act,” Sher said.

Karin Sheldon, the Wilderness Society’s vice president for conservation, characterized the decision as “a vindication of our concern that this process not be unduly subject to political machinations.”

An attorney for the Oregon Lands Coalition, a citizens group that has lobbied on behalf of increased timber harvesting to save jobs, criticized the ruling and its impact.

“Unfortunately, the heartache and misery in the timber communities of Oregon (are) not over yet,” said William Perry Pendley of the Mountain States Legal Foundation, a conservative public-interest group based in Denver.

“We had hoped that at least some men would be able to go back to work,” Pendley said, referring to several thousand loggers who have lost jobs as a result of court decisions halting lumber sales. “They’re still without the means to support their families,” he added.

The 9th Circuit decision marks the latest chapter in a long-running battle over protection for the spotted owl, which lives in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest.

In 1990, the Interior Department designated the owl as a threatened species. The following year, two federal district court judges, in separate suits filed by Sher, found that after declaring the owl threatened, the Bush Administration failed in its legal obligations to protect the bird.

Wednesday’s ruling was focused on a narrow legal issue: whether the President or his staff can intervene, outside the formal public process, in decisions entrusted to the Endangered Species Committee.

The seven-member committee was chaired by Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan. The other members were Agriculture Secretary Edward Madigan; Army Secretary Michael Stone; William K. Reilly, head of the Environmental Protection Agency; John Knauss, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Michael Boskin, director of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and Tom Walsh, representing Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts.

The committee granted an exemption for the sales on a 5-2 vote, the minimum necessary for approval under the law. Just a week before the vote, news stories, quoting anonymous Administration sources, said that Yeutter, the Bush Administration’s environmental policy coordinator, lobbied committee members.

Sher asserted at the time that such lobbying violated the law. A Lujan spokesman confirmed that Yeutter had met with Lujan and Reilly, but maintained that the meeting dealt only with broad environmental issues.

But in a brief filed with the 9th Circuit, Sher said Administration sources told him that the news stories were accurate and revealed “that at least in one instance, such pressure may have succeeded in influencing (and ultimately, changing) the vote of at least one” member of the God Squad.

The Bush Administration contended in its legal briefs that it was entitled to have secret communications on the issue with the committee because the committee is part of the executive branch--a claim the Appeals Court flatly rejected.

“The public’s right to attend all committee meetings, participate in all committee hearings and have access to all committee records would be effectively nullified if the committee were permitted to base its decisions on the private conversations and secret talking points and arguments to which the public and the participating parties have no access,” wrote Judge Stephen Reinhardt. He was joined in the decision by Circuit Judges Alfred T. Goodwin and Dorothy W. Nelson.

The appeals court also rejected a Justice Department assertion that subjecting Bush Administration officials to the mandates of the federal Administrative Procedure Act violated the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.

Congress is expected to take up the task of writing new legislation this year that will balance protection for the owl with lumber jobs. Similar efforts foundered last year.

During the presidential campaign, Bill Clinton promised to bring all parties together for a northwest “forest summit” to resolve the conflict between preservationists and timber harvesters. After Clinton was elected, Vice President Al Gore and Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt reaffirmed that such a meeting would be a high priority.

Times staff writer John Balzar in Seattle contributed to this story.